Today me and my dad went on a walk to a wood near Gleneagles, just a few miles from my house. We'd been there before twice, and knew there were roe deer there. We crept into the wood quietly and went round the edges of a clearing. As we went down a dry stream bed, we saw a roe deer watching us. We stopped and hid and saw that there were were three roe deer, a buck, a doe and a fawn.

This is a bone I found on a walk last week in the Pheasant Woods. It's a very unusual bone. I have found two like it before, and it took a while to work out what they were.

The first time I found this type of bone was on a walk near the geese lakes. In a small wood, I found it next to some other bones, and I kept it because it was unusual. It was in a loop like a small horseshoe that was bent, and the ends had points.

It has been cold this winter, but I've still been going on loads of walks. The walks have all been in the Pheasant Woods to try and watch the roe deer that live there.

Winter is tough for deer. All the water they usually drink is frozen, even the big lochs in the Pheasant Woods. The grasses and plants they normally eat are buried under snow. This means they have to try harder to find food and explore new areas.

Tuesday was my first day back at school. Because it has been really really snowy in my village, my dad didn't go into his office but went on a walk instead to watch the roe deer. When he was watching the deer he turned around and saw a red squirrel in the tree and was lucky to get a picture of it.

It's been a great Christmas but very snowy, so it's difficult to see many bones because there is the ground is all covered in lots of snow. Even though its been snowy and cold I've been on lots of walks and seen lots of wildlife, especially birds, so this week I'm just going to write about birds.

Because its been so snowy, the easiest wood to walk in is the Pheasant Wood, on the other side of the river to my village. There are actually lots of pheasant woods around where I live. During the year the gamekeepers look after the pheasants, then in winter people pay to shoot them. Here's a male pheasant on the left with a female pheasant on the right. They have very long tails. I have a pheasant skull in my collection.

Pheasants are quite fat, an they don't like to fly very much, so they just walk around on the ground. Here are what their footprints look like in the snow.

About me

I'm Jake McGowan-Lowe and I am a bone collector, naturalist, blogger and author as seen on BBC's The One Show, Autumnwatch, Winterwatch, CBBC Wild, Newsround and BBC Breakfast.

I've appeared on the BBC alongside such experts as Sir David Attenborough, Chris Packham, Nick Baker and Ben Garrod. BBC Wildlife Magazine says I'm one of the 50 most influential conservationists in the UK, and The Courier ranked me as the 24th most influential person in 2015.

I am fourteen years old, and I live in a beautiful part of Scotland. I love walking, exploring, watching wildlife and collecting bones. I've been collecting bones since I was six, and I blogged here every week between July 2009 (when I was seven) until February 2016, when I took a break.

You can read more about why I began blogging here, and my advice to other kids wanting to blog here.

Jake's Bones: The book !

Like this blog ? Buy the book ! This blog and my collection led to a book deal for a brilliant childrens' book published by Hachette Children's. It's now been published in the UK, Ireland, the USA, Canada, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands (called Het Grote Bottenboek van Jake) and South Korea.

It was even shortlisted for the prestigious Royal Society 2015 Young Person's Book Prize !

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Me in the news

There have been stories about me in The Times, the Daily Telegraph Magazine, the Daily Mail, the Mail on Sunday,The Sun, Scotland on Sunday, the Sunday Mail, the Dundee Courier, the Perthshire Advertiser, the Stirling Observer, onBBC Radio Scotland, on the STV news, and I've even been on CBBC Wild, CBBC Newsround, The One Show, BBC Autumnwatchand Winterwatch !